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Atlanta Braves pitcher Chris Sale is one of the great stories so far in the 2024 MLB season. It just got better for him after getting an MLB All-Star Game nod.
Not many people expected him to get such an honor after all the challenges he had to overcome in the past just to continue pitching, but here he is, on his way to his first All-Star Game appearance since 2018. One can only imagine the true degree of happiness Sale felt when he learned that he was about to make an appearance in the midsummer classic for just the first time in six years.
“It’s definitely satisfying,” the 35-year-old Chris Sale said (h/t David O'Brien of The Athletic).
“I appreciate it, for sure. You go through some years like I had, and you start thinking if this is ever even a possibility again. And to be in this position, to have a team take a chance on me — it wasn’t an easy trigger to pull, I’m assuming, but they gave me a chance and I’m happy to be able to do this for them,” Sale added.
Chris Sale is good (and healthy) again
When the Braves acquired Sale from the Boston Red Sox in December 2023 in exchange for Vaughn Grissom, many wondered whether there was enough gas in his arm to make a huge difference. Sale had struggled with injuries before the Braves made a move on him. He sustained a torn ulnar collateral ligament in 2020, suffered a rib injury just before the 2022 campaign, and picked up finger and wrist injuries.
“The last few years he’s obviously had some IL time,” Atlanta's general manager Alex Anthopoulos said about Sale last December (via the Associated Press).
“You can’t run from that. You realize that. But we feel like this is the first normal offseason he’ll have had in a long time. But at the same time, look, he’s coming off 100 innings pitched last year.”
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Prime Sale was a strikeout machine on the mound. But with the injuries he dealt in recent years, he managed to post just a 17-18 record with a 4.16 ERA, 3.56 FIP, and 113 ERA+ across 56 starts from 2019 to 2023. That stretch includes his absence in the entire 2020 campaign as he had to undergo Tommy John surgery.
Since arriving in Atlanta, however, Sale has seemingly been defying the odds and expectations people have of him before the season. Through his first 16 starts in Braves threads, Sale has put together an 11-3 record with a 2.71 ERA and an impressive 2.26 FIP. In addition, he has a sub-1.00 WHIP and a 151 ERA+. His strikeout rate is at 32.7 percent while his home run rate is at 1.8 percent — better than the HR% he had during his best years with the Chicago White Sox.
His 3.3 fWR is heads and shoulders above fellow All-Star Braves pitcher Reynaldo Lopez (2.1), per FanGraphs.
Speaking of strikeouts, Sale continues to be on a roll in that area.
“For the second time this season, Chris Sale is on a five-game streak with 7+ strikeouts and two or fewer runs allowed. No other @Braves pitcher in the modern era has even one such streak of at least five games,” shared OptaSTATS.
Sale, a two-time American League strikeout leader, made his debut in the big leagues way back in 2010 with the White Sox and won a World Series with the Red Sox in 2018.
